The Killer eBook

I lay in my bunk and cast things up in my mind.
The patch of moonlight from the window moved slowly
across the floor. One of the men was snoring,
but with regularity, so he did not annoy me. The
outside silence was softly musical with all the little
voices that at Hooper’s had so disconcertingly
lacked. There were crickets—­I had forgotten
about them—­and frogs, and a hoot owl, and
various such matters, beneath whose influence customarily
my consciousness merged into sleep so sweetly that
I never knew when I had lost them. But I was never
wider awake than now, and never had I done more concentrated
thinking.

For the moment, and for the moment, only, I was safe.
Old Man Hooper thought he had put me out of the way.
How long would he continue to think so? How long
before his men would bring true word of the mistake
that had been made? Perhaps the following day
would inform him that Jim Starr and not myself had
been reached by his killer’s bullet. Then,
I had no doubt, a second attempt would be made on
my life. Therefore, whatever I was going to do
must be done quickly.

I had the choice of war or retreat. Would it
do me any good to retreat? There was the Jew
drummer who was killed in San Francisco; and others
whose fates I have not detailed. But why should
he particularly desire my extinction? What had
I done or what knowledge did I possess that had not
been equally done and known by any chance visitor to
the ranch? I remembered the notes in my shirt
pocket; and, at the risk of awakening some of my comrades,
I lit a candle and studied them. They were undoubtedly
written by the same hand. To whom had the other
been smuggled? and by what means had it come into
Old Man Hooper’s possession? The answer
hit me so suddenly, and seemed intrinsically so absurd,
that I blew out the candle and lay again on my back
to study it.

And the more I studied it, the less absurd it seemed,
not by the light of reason, but by the feeling of
pure intuition. I knew it as sanely as I knew
that the moon made that patch of light through the
window. The man to whom that other note had been
surreptitiously conveyed by the sad-eyed, beautiful
girl of the iron-barred chamber was dead; and he was
dead because Old Man Hooper had so willed. And
the former owners of the other notes of the “Collection”
concerning which the old man had spoken were dead,
too—­dead for the same reason and by the
same hidden hands.

Why? Because they knew about the girl? Unlikely.
Without doubt Hooper had, as in my case, himself made
possible that knowledge. But I remembered many
things; and I knew that my flash of intuition, absurd
as it might seem at first sight, was true. I
recalled the swift, darting onslaughts with the fly
whackers, the fierce, vindictive slaughter of the
frogs, his early-morning pursuit of the flock of migrating
birds. Especially came clear to my recollection
the words spoken at breakfast:

“Everything inside the walls is mine! Mine!
Mine! Understand? I will not tolerate anything
that is not mine; that does not obey my will; that
does not come when I say come; go when I say go; and
fall silent when I say be still!”